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A huge percentage of the efforts directed toward global warming focuses on prevention. Arizona-based company Global Research Technologies centers on the cure instead. ACCESS, or Atmospheric Carbon CapturE SystemS Air Capture System, is a telephone-booth-size machine that has the capacity to cleanse ambient air of carbon dioxide molecules. Inside the machine are sheets of fabric-like materials, responsible for the air cleansing process. The company's keeping mum about the material's chemical components, but according to source, trapping carbon dioxide molecules is quite easy--what's proved to be challenging is developing the process to remove the collected particles.

A chemical solution which adheres to the carbon dioxide strips it off the fabriclike sheets. The solution is drained and ran through electrodialysis to isolate carbon dioxide particles as pure gas. The available prototype as of now can capture around 100 kilograms of carbon dioxide per day. The ultimate goal is to capture a ton daily, but that's definitely far off into the future. Joyce Kilmer might have loved trees, but when that time comes, ACCESS machines could capture 3 kg of carbon dioxide per second--that's equivalent to what a tree absorbs in one whole year. I very much doubt we'll be composing poems in honor of ACCESS machines in the future, but that figure's pretty impressive.

ACCESS's ideal setting would be in clusters in any single location. There's no special requirement for the machine to work. True, it works more efficiently in the presence of a breeze, but it can function anywhere you place it. In spite of the promising technology, the company's well aware that ACCESS won't be viable for commercial release anytime soon.

Critics mention that the device itself uses electricity; to which the company responded that they aim to power their gadgets purely from solar energy in the future. Also, based on current costs of operation, it would take a few hundred dollars to capture 1 ton of carbon dioxide. The goal is to be able to bring down the costs to $30 per ton. We still don't know when ACCESS will be released in the future, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for it.